Underdead (31 page)

When we caught up to her, she was banging on my door. “Jo? Josephine? Honey, it’s your mother. Open the door!”

“Mom?”

She gasped in alarm, stared wide-eyed at me for a long moment, and then threw both arms around me in an unexpectedly prickly hug. “Jo, honey, I came as soon as I heard.” Her voice caught and she squeezed me even tighter.

Something sharp was digging into my scalp, but I didn’t complain. For little while, anyway. When she finally let me go, I saw she was holding a dozen roses. Odd. I hadn’t noticed her carrying flowers when I’d spied her from the car.

“Oh, Jo, sweetie, how are you?” She hadn’t completely relinquished me. Her hands remained lightly my shoulders and her eyes scanned me from head to toe, taking in every bandage, every bruise, every scrape. “You seem okay,” she said. “I heard you got pushed out of a window?” She made it a question.

“I’m fine. Really. I didn’t fall very far—and I, er, managed to break my fall by landing on a hedge.” The last part was true. Well, mostly true.

Her teeth clenched in fury and her blue eyes seemed to emit sparks of rage. The only thing worse than pissing off a redhead, apparently, was pissing off a redheaded mother. Kendra was lucky she was behind bars.

Very gently, I detached her hands from my shoulders before they could add to the bruises on my frame. “Mother. Mother!” I met her eyes and said, “I’m fine.”

She blinked. “Of course you are, dear.”

Gavin eyed me speculatively, as if trying to fit what I’d said to my mother against what I’d told
him
in the hopes of filling the gaps in my story. I schooled my features into my best look of innocence and stared back at him. After a brief while, a slightly hazy look of acceptance replaced the suspicion in his eyes.

I kept myself from spiraling down into another I-am-Demon freakout by telling myself that my success was rooted in a lifetime’s worth of dissembling and no way vampire related.

“Jo, honey, why don’t we go inside?”

“Oh. Right.” I automatically reached for my bag before I realized it wasn’t there. “My keys…in my classroom…”

Gavin pulled out his phone. “I’ll have someone bring them over.”

“That’s all right,” my mother said. She opened her capacious designer purse and withdrew a ring of keys that was the duplicate of my own, down to the tiny funny-shaped one that opened my bike lock.

“How did you get the one to my bike—never mind,” I said.

Gavin follow me in, bending down first to pick up a small, rectangular package. He turned it over in his hands and then handed it to me. “I believe this is for you.”

There was no note attached to the brown paper wrapping, just my name written in bold, unfamiliar script. “Odd,” I said. “I wonder what this is?”

“Looks like a book,” said my mother. She was right, of course. My mother could tell what was inside a package as effectively as an x-ray machine. I ripped off the wrapping and stared at the contents. It was a copy of Thomas Hardy’s
Return of the Native
.

“Oh,” said my mother, immediately losing interest. She went to the kitchen to look for something to put the flowers in.

I looked slowly up from the book and met Gavin’s hard stare.

My mother came back in the room, still holding the flowers. “Jo,” she said. Her voice had regained a little of its usual crispness. “Don’t you have
any
vases suitable for long stemmed roses?”

Sure. On the shelf above the plastic containers, where I keep the crystal water goblets and brandy snifters. “No, Mom, I don’t.”

Gavin kept his eyes trained on me. “Mrs. Gartner,” he said, “was there a card with those flowers?”

“Oh! I’m so sorry, Joey. I didn’t think to check.”

I looked at her in surprise. She must have been more worried than I thought. The warm familial glow that rose in my chest was abruptly cut short when she handed me a tiny card. It contained little more then a signature in the same bold and forceful script as had been on the package.

I dropped the book as if it burned. “I don’t want the flowers,” I said.

“What?” said my mother.

“Who’s it from?” asked Gavin.

“Will.”

My mother reached for the note but I ripped it into tiny pieces and threw it away.

“Oh!” she said. “Well!” She dumped the roses in the trashcan near my desk and the book followed with a satisfying thump. She brushed the dirt briskly from her hands as if to say
good riddance!
“Well honey, it’s a terrible shame, of course, that you broke up with him, but frankly, dear, I didn’t think he was good enough for you. I know you’re young and have very noble feelings, but I can’t believe you’d have been happy with Will in the long run, not with what he did for a living.”

Gavin was, for once, absolutely speechless. I had forgotten I had told my mother that yarn about Will’s occupation.

“Really, Mother,” I said, “you shouldn’t be so judgmental.”

Gavin’s jaw dropped.

“Well I’d hardly call it a
career
, darling, and he isn’t even very
good
at it, now is he?” she sniffed.

I was so appalled at her snobbery that I automatically defended Will’s occupation even though I had made it up. “Not everyone is cut out to be a banker like Dad, Mom. Being an assistant manager at the coffee shop is a good job for someone like Will.”

Gavin let out a strangled snort. My mother looked curiously at him and he tried to turn it into a cough. Unfortunately he managed rather too well and I had to pound his back before he could breathe normally again.

When he could speak again, he said, “Whatever you do, don’t let this, er—coffee shop manager—in.”

“You don’t think he’s dangerous, do you?” my mother asked.

“I do.” Gavin looked at my mother but his words were meant for me. “I’ve dealt a lot with men of his type, Mrs. Gartner. When a—er—jilted boyfriend sends something that has personal meaning, as I expect that book had, it usually means he’s not ready to let go. They’re the ones most likely to turn violent. The important thing is to make it very clear that the relationship is over. If you see him, go quickly in the other direction. And whatever you do, never ever let him inside. Even for a moment, no matter how nice he seems.”

“Well! I can assure you that man will no longer be welcome here,” said my mother, lifting her chin as if ready for battle. “In fact, I’m going to take those ‘gifts’ out to the dumpster right now.”

I put out a hand to stop her. For all I knew, Will was hovering outside in the shadows, waiting to see my reaction to his gift. “I think that can wait ‘til morning, Mom. Maybe you could make us some hot chocolate?” I let a little fatigue color my voice. It wasn’t hard to do, I was bone tired and running on leftover adrenaline. She bustled off, pleased to be able to do something to mother me a bit.

Gavin headed for the door. “I’ll need you to sign your statement tomorrow and I’ll probably have a few follow-up questions.”

“I’ll come by the station on the way home from work.”

“You’re going to work tomorrow?”

“Trust me. It will be worse for me if I put it off.” Plenty of teachers, students and parents lived within spitting distance of Bayshore, and had followed the police sirens to the school parking lot, like moths to a flame. I could only imagine what was swirling through the grapevine already.
Oh, no!
Had Kendra said anything about vampires in front of all those people?

As if reading my thoughts, Gavin said in a low voice, “Don’t worry, we spoke to the headmaster tonight in the privacy of his office and I assure you, vampires were never mentioned. Kendra hasn’t spilled the beans yet—and I’m quite sure her lawyer will advise against it. She’d have to admit how she’d been following both you and Bob—and how she’d nicked his neck in an attempt to frame you. ‘Accidental homicide’ is much more palatable to a jury when you don’t add in those disturbingly premeditative-sounding bits.”

“Hmph.”

“It’s only a tight little group at the station that knows about this, Jo, and I’ll make sure nothing gets out on our end. As far as anyone will know, she attacked you with a regular old knife. I don’t want to make things awkward for you at work.”

“You mean any more awkward than the fact she hated me enough to try to kill me?” I said. “You know this is going to resurrect all those stupid rumors about me and Bob. I almost wish you would let the vampire rumor take its course—at least no one would believe that one!”

There was a loud crash in the kitchen. My mother seemed to be wrestling more pots on the stove than were necessary for a couple cups of hot chocolate. I put a hand on Gavin’s arm to get his attention. “Thanks,” I said simply.

I thought his expression softened slightly before he looked away. “So,” he said. “What’s the significance of the Thomas Hardy book?” Apparently I was wrong about the glimpse of humanity. Really! The man was made of stone.

Gavin waited for a response, but I didn’t answer him. The truth was, I really didn’t know what Will had meant in sending that book. I had told him about my weird Christmas ritual of reading Hardy books to distract him from what I had thought was some closely held regret about his career—as some sort of human resource manager. Talk about title inflation.

But while depressing Victorian literature might help put petty holiday complaints in perspective, I didn’t think there was any frigate of a book big enough to take me away from the fact that I was turning into a vampire.

Will’s victims usually experienced a quick transformation, but I was facing a protracted death. Not only did I know I was going to die (un-die? I’m still a little fuzzy on that part), but I knew what my fate would be. And unlike most people, I had no hope of wearing wings and a halo.

Had Will sent the book to underscore the supreme hopelessness of my situation or to help me face it? Was it a nice gesture or a cruel one?

Gavin’s voice pulled me out of my dark study. “All right,” he said, “Don’t tell me. I’ll guess. Let’s see…Will was born in the 1800s and was a contemporary of Hardy. No?” He put his hands in his pockets and leaned casually against the door jamb. “Well then, perhaps he hasn’t actually read the book and thinks
The Return of the Native
is about a nudist colony in Malibu. If that’s the case, I’m all the more glad I told your mother to steer clear of him. That’s not it either? Well, I’m out of ideas. I can think of no reason why he would give you a depressing book to read. I read that book in high school and am still getting over it. Don’t look so surprised. I can read, you know. It’s practically a requirement for graduating college these days.”

He pushed himself back to an upright position with his shoulder so that he stood very close to me. He smelled good, an inexplicably comforting blend of wool and fabric softener. “Please, Jo, be careful.” He spoke slowly and seriously. “Kendra may be in jail, but somehow I was never as worried about that threat.”

“Really, Detective,” I said with a lightness I did not feel, “you worry too much.”

“Perhaps. But I’d rather you stayed alive. Because if you didn’t—” His gray eyes burned into mine before straying briefly to my lips. I felt a heated rush down to my toes. “Your mom would come after me. And for some reason I’m more scared of her than anything else I’ve run across.” He smiled that rare grin of his and his silvery gaze held mine for a brief, breathless moment. And then he turned and let himself out.

Chapter One

If it hadn’t been for the faint odor of gym socks I never would have believed I was in the theater at the Bayshore Academy.

The stage was transformed into an amazingly accurate replica of the school quad, complete with real grass (I could smell the sweet, earthy sod from my seat.) and a Broadway quality backdrop of the Long Beach shoreline. It was so impeccably rendered I half expected the Queen Mary to pull up from its moorings and glide over the horizon in a belch of black smoke. But the sets were nothing next to the actors, who were emoting like soap opera stars in Emmy Award season. I wasn’t sure if what I was watching was spectacularly good or spectacularly bad, but I couldn’t look away.

I gasped with the rest of the audience as a rowdy mob of football players produced a noose and went after head cheerleader Esmeralda. And as they strung her up between the goal posts and let her swing, I actually rose in teacherly alarm.

I knew from watching copious amounts of television (You grade ninety-six copies of each assignment, then judge me.) that the actress had a safety harness hidden under her cheerleader costume. Even so, it was a
very
convincing effect and as my initial tug of alarm dissipated, I couldn’t help but wish the play had called for a more exciting death.

I bet the director really could have done something with a play that called for, say, a knife fight. I wondered what he would have used. Some sort of special mail-order stage blood and a pump?

I was halfway through imagineering a really good design to simulate arterial spray that involved those little packets of ketchup you get at fast-food restaurants before I realized what I was doing. Obviously, I’d been spending too much time with my middle school students. Bloodthirsty things.

As Esmeralda gave her fifth and final death spasm, someone cut the lights, plunging the theater into inky darkness. A faint breeze emanating from the back of the theater broke the stale, noisome air and as I gratefully turned in my seat, I could just make out a slight, misshapen silhouette standing in an open doorway. A spotlight snapped on, identifying the hunching figure as our hero, Quasimodo, the Chess Club Chairman. As he limped convulsively up the aisle to where the cheerleader’s body lay in a pool of golden light, an unseen figure up in the balcony keened a lament.

I whispered across the seat arm to Becky, “This isn’t exactly the Disney version of
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
, is it?”

Becky is the high school’s hot-shot chemistry teacher. She is also one of my best friends and the reason I was spending Thursday night watching this unexpectedly artsy high school production instead of polishing my lesson plan for tomorrow. Or grading lab reports. Or surfing the net for ideas on how to make my eighth grade students interested enough in earth science that they didn’t seek their own entertainment in the form of lobbing spitballs. At me.